The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others

Kealan Patrick Burke's first collection RAVENOUS GHOSTS was released in a very limited run, promptly sold out, and now commands high prices on the secondary market. We are very pleased to introduce you to the author's follow-up collection, an ambitious gathering of some of the tales for which he is best known.The lonesome sound of a long forgotten train draws an old man to memories of a horrific past... A journalist makes the mistake of visiting a website where real-life executions are the order of the day... At the foot of an old tree, an insidious evil awaits two boys digging for treasure... A browbeaten salesman finds hope and a possible escape from the banality of his world when he returns home to find a fairytale beanstalk sprouting from his garden... A man resists the social pressure to quit smoking and puts himself at an unimaginable risk... A high school student accepts a dare to ask out the ugliest girl in school and enters a world of pain and violence... A bunch of barflies doomed to murder sinners get together for one last drink in a dying town...These are some of the passengers, headed for a ride through the dark uncharted regions of the heart and mind, on a train unbound by any law but its own.All Aboard The Number 121 to Pennsylvania.There will be no stops.

From Publishers Weekly

Paul, a widower haunted by the ghosts of his wife and unborn son in The Grief Frequency, sums up Burke's subtle approach thus: The dead can be among the living; the living, among the dead. In 14 dark fantasies collected here, Burke (Currency of Souls) creates characters whose angst opens them up to uncanny incidents and ghostly encounters that seem an extension of their own spiritual malaise. Empathy tells of a journalist so distraught over a brutal terrorist execution that his nightmares begin erupting graphically into daily reality. In Mr. Goodnight, a young boy's terrifying encounter with a malignant entity leaves him distrusting even his closest loved ones. Though plot takes a backseat to mood and atmosphere in some stories, Burke shows skill at imagining expressive supernatural experiences appropriate for his well-developed characters and their agitated emotions. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Opening with “The Grief Frequency,” about a fatal car accident, the haunting of the survivor by his wife and unborn son, and what he does so he can keep seeing them, Burke sets the stage for a sad, ghostly set of stories. “The Number 121 to Pennsylvania” focuses on an old man’s memory of his father’s death and a ghost train that hasn’t run in more than 50 years. With “Mr. Goodnight” (included in both short story and screenplay forms), the story of a monster buried for years but unearthed when a couple of kids are looking for something to do, after which the killing starts again, Burke reaches the peak of the collection’s creepy horror, which is always subtle enough to be unsettling, not just shocking. Nor is it all undeserved brutal endings in Burke’s world. “High on the Vine,” a reimagining of Jack and the Beanstalk, concludes perfectly reasonably. A satisfying, large collection, ample in the variety of its horrors—but don’t read it late at night. --Regina Schroeder

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